Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564-8 January 1642) was an Italian polymath who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution of the 1600s. Born in Pisa, Galilei studied medicine in 1581, but he found that his true loves were math and sciences. In 1588, he invented the rules that governed the pendulum, and he served as chair of mthematics at the universities at Pisa and Padua from 1589 to 1610. He also invented improved telescope, helping him with observing space, and his great discoveries led to him gaining both friends and enemies in high places, with universities supporting him and the Catholic church opposing him. Galilei was later appointed the mathematician and philosopher of the prestigious House of Medici, gaining him the money and protection of the Medicis. In 1632, he published Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems, a book tha tsupported heliocentrism, and he was summoned to Rome in 1633 to face an inquisition. He spent his final days under house arrest while writing summaries of his Morion Experiments, and he died in 1642. He is famous for his compasses, balances, improved telescopes and microscopes, and his revolutionary views on astronomy and biology.